HOME IS ACCUSED IN DEATH OF AGED

A former employe or a large South Jersey nursing home has reportedly complained to state authorities that 30 of the 60 elderly patients in the home's intensive‐care wing died last winter after the home's administrators ignored the recommendations of its own medical consultant to protect the patients from an influenza epidemic.

Miriam Span, a deputy to the state's Public Advocate, Stanley C. Van Ness, said last night that the former employe, who had worked as a nurse's aide in the intensive‐care wing of the home, had made the charges in a long interview two weeks ago.

Mrs. Span, who stressed that she had neither verified nor investigated the young woman's charges, declined to name the home or the former employe.

No Reasons for Doubt

She said, however, that the young woman, who had worked as a nurse in Montana before receiving a provisional license that allowed her to work as nurse's aide, “seemed credible and I have no reason to doubt her.”

Mrs. Span said that the woman's account of the deaths in the intensive‐care wing came out as she was listing a number of other charges against the home, including the allegation that untrained personnel were allowed to supervise medication, with the result that dosages were frequently “mixed up.”

In addition, the former employe told Mrs. Span that, because of insufficient personnel, the home routinely combined the 4 P.M. and the 9 P.M. dosages of medication prescribed for the elderly patients.

State Senator John J. Fay Jr., Democrat of Middlesex and the chairman of the Joint Legislative Nursing Home Study Commission, said last night that he had been informed of the former employe's charges and would invite her to testify at hearings scheduled for the South Jersey area next month.

Mrs. Span, who called a death rate of 50 per cent over a single winter “exceedingly high,” even for a population of frail, elderly patients in an intensive‐care wing, said the former employe had told her that the home's medical consultant had sought to bar visitors from the wing for a short period during an influenza outbreak in the area last winter.

“But the home pooh‐poohed the idea for some reason,” Mrs. Span said, quoting the former employe, who told her she had left the home at the end of February “because of conditions there.”

Mrs. Span, who said the young woman had attributed many of the deaths to the patients’ exposure to visitors with colds, emphasized that her office had not even verified that there were 30 deaths in the 60‐patient wing during the winter.

“After I talked with her I wrote it up and put it on the back burner,” said Mrs. Span, who explained that the Public Advocate's office had only two investigators to check out a mounting list of complaints against a number of nursing homes in the state.

The Public Advocate's staff has been busy preparing the report on nursing homes issued by Mr. Van Ness on Friday at a hearnig held by Senator Fay's committee.

Mr. Van Ness, who told the committee that his office had inspected eight nursing homes and found a number of major deficiencies, recommended that the state withhold Federal Medicaid funds from homes that failed to provide proper care or engaged in fraudulent fiancial practices.

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A version of this archives appears in print on May 5, 1975, on Page 67 of the New York edition with the headline: HOME IS ACCUSED IN DEATH OF AGED. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe